PowerWall 2.0

I know, I know, powerWall hasn't been started shipping yet and I will probably get mine later this summer (assuming my Utility company doesn't' screw me up after they add the installation and transformer price) but the specs of the product is already out.

So this made me think, what would I like to see in my next version:

1. Capacity Requirement:
Daily average US Household Energy need: 10KWH a day.
Storage reserve to cover 5 cloudy days: 10*5 = 50 kwh

A PowerWall 2.0 should have at least 50 kwh of storage capacity. If not in once piece, then a packaged price would do.

2. Cost
In Maryland, the normal utility rate is very close to 10 cents/kwh, so any off-grid arrangement that I look for, has to provide me values comparable to this rate.
Assuming 10 years battery life:
Energy consumed in 10 years: 10*365*10 = 36, 500 kwh
Cost of Grid Energy in 10 years: 36500 * 0.10 = 3,650 $

Solar Panel size to generate 10kwh/day = 10kwh/(3.3 hr average effective daylight) = 3kw
3kw Solar Panel cost : $3, 000
Solar panel life: 20 years
10 years cost for Solar panel: 3000/(20/10) = $1500

Battery break even cost : $3650 - $1500 = $2150.

So, a battery pack with installation and inverter should NOT cost more than $2150 to make it cost effective.

My Recent Read and Recommendations

Cover Page	Title	Author	Genre
	ISIS: A History	Fawaz A. Gerges	History, GeoPolitics
	Hillbilly Elegy	JD Vance	Civil
	Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder and One Man's Fight for Justice	Bill Browder	Finance, GeoPolitics
	Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind	Yuval Noah Harari	History, Anthropology
	Being Mortal	Atul Gawande	Health, Medicine, Elderly Care
	The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal	David E. Hoffman	Health, Medicine, Elderly Care
	The Wright Brothers	David McCullough	Health, Medicine, Elderly Care
	In Defense of a Liberal Education	Fareed Zakaria	Education, History, Arts
	The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disorder	Peter Zeihan	Geopolitics
	The Universe: Leading Scientists Explore the Origin, Mysteries, and Future of the Cosmos	John Brockman	Science
	The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution	Walter Isaacson	Technology, History, Science
	Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think	Steven Kotler, Peter H. Diamandis	Economy, Geography
	World Order	Henry Kissinger	Geopolitics, History
	Temptations of Power: Islamists & Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East	Shadi Hamid	History, Politics, Geography
	The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism	Andrew J. Bacevich	Politics
	Hard Choices	Hillary Rodham Clinton	Biography
	Think Like a Freak	Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner	Everday life
	Behind the Cloud	Marc Benioff, Carlye Adler	Technology
	Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt	Michael Lewis	Economy, Commerce
	The Second Machine Age	Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee	Technology
	Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War	Robert M. Gates	Biography
	Double Down: Game Change 2012	Mark Halperin, John Heilemann	Biography, Election, Politics
	Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House	Peter Baker	Biography,Politics
	What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful!	Marshall Goldsmith, Mark Reiter	Personality Development
	The Age of Edison: Electric Light and the Invention of Modern America	Ernest Freeberg	Hisotry, Science and Technology
	The Idea of America	Gordon S Wood	History
	The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business	Eric Schmidt, Jared Cohen	Technology
	Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?: Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround	Louis V. Gerstner	Technology
	The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World	Niall Ferguson	Finance, Economy
	The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail--but Some Don't	Nate Silver	Data Science, statistics
	Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father - and How We Can Fix It	David Goldhill	Healthcare
	The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation	Jon Gertner	History, Science and Technology
	Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty	Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson	History
	Breakout Nations: In Pursuit of the Next Economic Miracles	Ruchir Sharma	Economy, Politics
	Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are	Sebastian Seung	Health Science
	Tubes: A Journey to the Center of the Internet	Andrew Blum	Technology
	Makers: The New Industrial Revolution Makers	Chris Anderson	Enterpreneurship, Technology
	The Post-American World (Release 2.0)	Fareed Zakaria	GeoPolitics, Economy
	Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success	Matthew Syed	Arts, psersonal development
	Superpower?: The Amazing Race Between China's Hare and India's Tortoise	Raghav Bahl	World Economy, Commerce, History
	The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right	Atul Gawande	Health Care, Medical Science

My Social Media Rules

Risking of being branded as self-obsessed, I still thought of penning down a few basic rules that I follow while (not) responding to a post written on various social media outlets:

I generally don't' respond to questions or posts or articles :

• Of personal nature on Twitter or LinkedIn. I use twitter for academic purpose and LinkedIn for career.
• Birth Days, Anniversary etc. on any sites. There are just too much of it around. Plus you already know I mean Well to all of you :)
• A Sad news on Facebook. Obviously I care for you enough and so how can I "like" it ?!!
• General Greetings (Hello, Hi, Good Morning etc.). I reserve these for in-person encounter.  Think we all should do our part to save the planet from un-required jitter.
• Any joke, article, event, appeal explicitly asking me to forward/comment/like it. If I like it, i will do it myself. Most often than not, these are data-harvesting tricks. And seldom these are  funny or anything out of ordinary.
• Any narration or claim of historic or scientific nature, unless I can do some basic fact-check myself. Mostly these are urban legends and a way to disseminate mis-information.
• Any discriminatory jokes, or multi-media involving minor, race, caste, color, religion etc. Plus be ready to get a harsh response from me, the idea of which is to hit the original creator through this "reverse-forward" mechanism (You will copy-n-paste my reply to the your poster who would in turn paste it to his and so forth). 

So If I didn't' "like" your cute little puppy picture on FaceBook last week, now you know why ..

  

bitcoin: A Very Handy Guide

There are some topics where a simple google search doesn't readily return a convincing answer.  Questions about bitcoin adaptation, security and trend fell in this category for me.

On one hand we hear news like Silk Road bust , mt. gox exchange bankruptcy and bitcoin price crash from $1000 to $250 in less than a year.

And then there are news everyday about new retailers joining the fray including big brand names like Amazon, Expedia, Overstock etc.

So, is it truly a revolutionary product which will eventually dictate the world economy  or it it just a one time internet sensation which is slowly fading away ?

This is what I tried to answer in this post. And while at it, thought of also providing exact steps and recommendations in getting you up and running (vs. listing tons of choices and confusing you even more as are the case in any article on the topic).

What it is and Where it stands now

bitcoin is a cryptocurrency (a fancy term for digital currency). But beware, this is NOT the only digital currency out there and there are other similar sounding cryptocurrencies (e.g. Riple, Litecoin, BitShares, Darkcoin, Dogecoin etc.) but by far bitcoin the most popular one.

What it means is, this currency is never in physical form. It is either on your computer (in a wallet there) or somewhere in a cloud with a provider (e.g. bitcoin exchange).

Is it Legal

With SilkRoad arrests, i know lot of people questioning if bitcoin is even legal.  The reality is bitcoin is completely legal in US (not so in countries like India and China).
Owning, trading, mining or buying products and services through bitcoin is fully legal in United States. The only caveat is, in US, IRS defines bitcoin as an investment and not currency and hence any profits or loss is to be taxed by existing capital gains tax laws.

Is it going to Stay ?

Most probably. If you look at bitcoin architecture and protocol, you will realize this is likely to be much more resilient than any physical currency out there, since this is not regulated by a government or a central authority. And the distributed nature of bitcoin processing proves that this is much more secure in case of any cyber attack and less prone to fraud.

The System itself 

bitcoin system consists of some very simple components:

bitcoin & Bitcoin

Semantic-wise there is a difference bitcoin (with lowercase 'b') and Bitcoin (with uppercase 'B'). bitcoin is the currency while the Bitcoin is the system itself.  The notation of bitcoin (the currency)  is BTC. 

Again, as written in first section, there are other cryptocurrency, so be careful what you are buying.

Wallet

Exactly like your physical wallet, its sole purpose is to keep bitcoin. Unlike physical currency though, you can't have bitcoin hanging up in the air. It is always in a wallet; either in your computer or in an online exchange.

A wallet is identified by its private key. Who ever has your wallet's private key, has your wallet and hence your money.

A wallet also has a public key, also called bitcoin address.  Actually it can have as many public key as you want. The purpose of these keys is to give it out; so that people can give you the money. Isn't that cool :)
Whenever you want someone to transfer you the bitcoin, you give them your public key or address.

Exchange

An exchange is a market place, where you buy or sell bitcoin and several other related entities. 

Now, if you want to buy bitcoin, you have to give them dollar, so exchange connects to your banking institute. And since it connects to your banking institute, this also need to confirm your identity etc.So there is some paperwork involved to meet with Federal guidelines about money laundering etc. 

But once that is taken care of, everything else in bitcoin industry is total anonymous. And exchange is not a must have component of bitcoin infrastructure. You can buy and sell bitCoin in person, over the emails etc. 

Mining

One of the strength is bitcoin is that it is not paper currency (also called FIAT currency if its not backed by gold etc.) and hence can't be printed at will. This helps maintain stability in its strength. 

Like gold, whose mining is naturally restricted by the nature, bitcoin can be created by computers which take part in maintaining the Bitcoin infrastructure but its mining gets increasingly difficult as the time goes by and it's limited to a certain quantity how much can be generated per day (3600 in 2014) and overall (21million). 

This process of creating bitcoin is called Mining.

Getting Started

To get into bitcoin buying, selling, trading and mining, you have to have bitcoin first. You can get bitcoin two ways: 

1. Earn your bitcoin - This is done through mining e.g. gold mining. And exactly like gold mining, its very very slow and time consuming process. Out of multiple ways to mine (home computer, Amazon Cloud etc.) I am going to suggest a hosted mining option on iex.io . more later
2. Buy bitcoin  - Alternatively or together with mining, you can also buy a bitcoin in exchange. Out of all available options, I am going to suggest coinbase.com 

Once you have bitcoin, you can transfer it to your wallet or can use the exchange wallet. 

Suggestion: leave it on exchange wallet unless you have a huge amount of bitcoin, in which case, you can use a wallet from bitcoin.org  but keep your wallet in a offline Drive (also called cold storage) or even print out the private key on a paper and keep in secure in a locker or something. Because if someone hacks into your computer and gets into your wallet or if you loose or corrupt your hard drive, its lost for ever, unless you have your private key noted down somewhere.

Steps: 

Buying bitcoin

set up your amounts with coinbase.com exchange 

• remember to enable 2 factor authentication by giving your phone number
• set up your account with coinbase.com 
• remember to enable 2 factor authentication by giving your phone number
• connect your bank account, confirm account connection
• buy a bitcoin (you can buy as little as one hundredth millionth of a bitcoin).

Mining bitcoin 

• set up your accounts with iex.io  
• remember to enable 2 factor authentication (2FA) by entering  your phone number & confirming it.
• Transfer bitcoin from your exchange to iex.io buy giving your public wallet key to coinbase.com
• use the newly transferred bitcoin to buy computer horsepower which in turn will mine the bitcoin for you. These horsepowers is measured in terms of GH/s (Giga Hash per second). iex takes you to its sister site called ghash.io for managing all of your mining activities.

will update this section with mining experience on Amaozon EC2 shortly. In general, its not cost effective to mine on Amazon.

And its almost never cost effective to mine on home computer machine, so I will be skipping this altogether.

Using bitcoin

Using the same exchange (coinbase.com ) you can trade bitcoin for dollars when the values goes up like stock.

or you can use bitcoin to buy product and services very similar to how you use your credit card. The merchant site, while choosing method of payment as bitcoin takes you to their settlement site where you pay using your bitcoin.

So  Go ahead !! Buy yourself some bitcoin and then try transferring a portion of it to  1JVuwbYHAzRTw5r9g7DBizoBT2n22fQaNw

to see if it works :)

Apple Wallet Vs. Google Pay

The title is not a typo. Bear with me to make my point clearer.

First, The Problem Space

The way I see it, A mobile payment needs to achieve below functionalities to be successful and more importantly a game changer:

1. Provide a seamless & easy-to-use digital way to consumers to make a online or in-person purchases, without the need to carry a bulky wallet
2. Provide a seamless, easy-to-use digital option to make personal payments to other users; friends, family, coworker etc. occasionally
3. Reduce the cost of these digital transactions; right now the industry uses several players between a payee (user) and paid party (another user or merchant) involving Credit card Companies, Credit Card Gateway, Payment Card issuing bank, Merchant banks etc. etc.  who altogether stack up a ridiculous margin up to 4-5% for each transaction
4. Speed up the Transaction Time - From the time you swipe your card or click 'submit' , it takes at least 3 days time for these myriads of partners to effect a payment. Does this really need to be that slow in this age ?
5. Be Secure.

The Apple W(P)ay

I was really excited to hear the leaking news before last months' announcement that Apple would again come up with a better way of doing things. After all, Google, Paypal etc. have tried this and haven't been able to move the needle yet. Needless to say, I was waiting.
The Apple Pay, though a great start to vigor the industry, unfortunately didn't' appear to be quite a game changer I had hoped for.

Here are my observations against the 5 problems I highlighted earlier:

Google Wallet

I bet majority of you haven't yet heard of Google Wallet (will abbreviate to GW). If there is ever a Worst PR Campaign awards, that should undoubtedly go to Google, that's because for a search Giant, they did a terrible job advertising their own service albeit a good one.

Below are my observation on Google wallet agains the same criteria:

Promise and Potential

Google Wallet covers most components of a payment infrastructure. It has the potential to cut the middlemen out (e.g. credit card companies, payment gateways, credit card issuing banks etc.) as it connects two consumers with their banks directly. This should definitely drive down the cost and drastically reduce the transaction time as the adaptation rises.

Apple Pay has even better potential since it has better clout over these different players but for that it needs to broaden up its scope and think beyond  'doing it better' strategy.  Otherwise Apple Pay will remain a simple Wallet service.

And That's Why Google Pay and Apple Wallet for now..

Is the EV community working against itself ??

Compare 2 identical cars; one Electric vehicle (EV) and one gas engine (internal combustion engine or ICE), preferably from same manufacturer if possible. Upgrade them to same features and upgrades and then compare the prices and gas vs electric car saving if you drive them average , say 12000 miles a year, what will you find ?? As most of you would have probably guessed, ICE car will be cheaper and more economical to own even in 5 years time-frame, even though driving EV is way too cheaper. Why ?? Because EV is just damn expensive.

Now, add to it the federal $7,500 tax rebate. If you make $50,000 or less, you might even be able to consume this whole $7500 rebate, but that's a different story. Let us assume, this rebate is directly cost saving. What does the figure looks like now ?? ICE car will still out weigh the EV.

Now, add the different standard manufacturer promotions savings from time to time. Now, the numbers will start looking a little bit better.

But wait, what about an EV Charging stations, EVSE, a so called Level2 Charging station that you install in your garage, so that the car still charge in 3-4 hours but at least is ready full charge when you get up in the morning ? Between the unit itself and the certified electrician's charge, installation expense and permit etc.  ready to fork out another $1500-$2000 for that. So, with whatever little trick you tried bending the numbers in your favor, it just vanishes installing one 240V, 30Amp unit, all it does is to pass current to your car.


I own a Honda Fit EV, which I am leasing, taking advantage of Honda recent's drastically lowered lease price. I love the technology, love the car and love the experience of owning one (my experience here). But I am making this numbers work for me, somehow.

But talk to any EV enthusiasts and you will hear different arguments; Environment friendliness, quite car, no trip to gas station, new & complex  technology etc. Never mind the limitations of a typical EV; slow charging, limited range forcing you to have another car, drastic reduction in range when its too hot or too cold, small sizes, small trunk space etc. etc.  It is as if the whole community is in self denial. They naturally like the technology and want to see it grow, yet not accepting the realities and arguing how it can really survive and grow. And did i mention, an often quoted example of Tesla ?!!

Here are few things that I recommend to EV community:

1. Stop taking about Environments benefits if you ever want to see EV become a mainstream alternatives to ICE.
2. Universally argue for Price reductions; The price needs to be reduced by at least 50% overall (after all gimmicks) for it to survive. Federal Tax incentives is a good way to bridge the gap, but that should not be the only one. Remember the 'general American subsidizing EV'  arguments Republican put forward against  it. It has merits. How the price will lower otherwise; Besides the massive battery technologies i.e. Tesla is building is one way. Other way is simply manufacturer taking risks; otherwise it will be a simply catch22 situation. Remember if Apple would have priced iPhone $1000+, it would have still justified that price point under that time, when a good computer was costing that much, but then could it have been a household product ?
3. Argue for the need for a regular looking car. The dorky look is one of the biggest informercial ever for EV.
4. Change your messaging to employer and businesses. Businesses spending $5k/each new charging stations at their locations is a very skewed economic argument ever. This is surviving so far because employer like the 'green environment-friendly' status and branding. But what it does is to limit the widespread adaption within its organization. If you have 2 charging stations at your work and you find them always full, will you still think about owning your own EV. Or if there are 4 EV drivers already, always vying for a parking spot, will any of them be a good advocate for you to own yet another EV ? What if the employer placed a simple 120V wall charing to say or even 50 spots, at fraction of costs. An employee wont' have to worry about signing up to third party for charging service, wont' have to remove their cars after a couple of hours to avoid huge charge back and can simply leave it plugged in for the entire day, getting enough juice for an average commute daily needs i.e. 40 miles. At an average $1-$2/socket, it will still be cheaper for businesses to leave employees use the free electricity to majority, then to go for extra headache of Level2 charging stations. 

unless the EV community changes its line of arguments, and pushes for an economically superior car, EV will remain a small, niche market only for a few.

   

My FIT EV: 2 months and 4000 miles later

Since the day I got my Honda Fit EV (Electric Vehicle), one of the most frequent questions beyond the obvious one regarding its not really sipping any gas, has been whether it has been worth it; economically speaking.

Of course, it made sense to me when I got it i.e. exactly 2 months ago, but does it still made sense ? I decided to run the numbers.

The Basics:

Let me start though giving the details of the car first:

• Make and Model: 2014 Honda Fit EV
• Type: 5 seater small station wagon (EPA Class) 100% electric vehicle
• Ownership: Lease
• Lease cost: 0% down (paid only sales tax, as with any vehicle lease out of which got $1000 refunded by MD state) , $259/month for 3 years
• Lease terms:
• Unlimited miles
• Collision Insurance included at $0
• $0 maintenance
• Free Home Charging Station

Now, to see if this lease cost made economic sense, I should compare total cost for this car with the total cost of any other EXACTLY similar non-electric car with exact same lease terms. Fortunately FIT EV has a gasoline sibling, the regular FIT, which runs on gas.

The problem is Honda doesn't' give these features i.e. unlimited miles and $0 collision insurance and maintenance cost on its regular FIT. Browsing Honda site, the most base model regular FIT, with $0 down option the monthly is leased out at $200/month for a 36 months term.

 

but as the fine print shows its only for 12,000 miles /a year beyond which Honda charges $0.15/miles:

So, at my current need of  24000/miles/year lease would cost me an outrageous $200 + 1000*0.15 = $350/month for a regular FIT. 

But since a similar lease term is not available for a regular FIT, its not easy apple to apple comparison for regular FIT lease vs. FIT EV lease.

So, I decides to go with best (i.e. the cheapest case scenario) for regular FIT, to see if I were all lucky to get best deal possible in regular FIT, would FIT EV still be a better option. Meaning what if I got a similar type of regular FIT with similar leasing terms for only $200/month lease.

Next comes the mileage driven. In last 2 months I drove 4000 miles (And yes, going the EV route was exactly for that reason, I drive a whole lot to cover my 80 miles daily commute to work).

FIT EV Calculation:

I have also been getting anywhere from 5.2 to 4.7 miles/kwh. Let us take on average 5.0 miles/kwh

The 4000 miles in that case would translate to 4000/5 = 200 kwh.

My local "effective" energy rate is 11.02c/kwh (the details on one of my previous post)

so, 200 kwh will cost me 200*11.02 cents = $22.04

Lease payment for FIT EV for 2 months: 2 * 259 = $518

Total cost (lease cost + electricity) incurrent in FIT EV: $22.04 + $518 = $530

Regular FIT Calculation:

2013 Regular FIT gas economy: 31mpg

Gas to drive 4000 miles: 400/31= 129 Gallon

cost for 129 Gallon = 129 * 3.35= $432

Lease payment for Regular FIT for 2 months: 2 * 200 = $400

Total cost (least cost + gas) incurrent in Regular FIT : $432 + $400 = $832

Conclusion:

So, Even in the most conservative way (assuming a dealer would give me all the goodies for free while easing a regular FIT that I got in FIT EV, and assuming gas price was $3.35, though that's the lowest in last 2 months) if I would have got a regular FIT, it would have costed me $832 in gas & leasing, while driving and leasing FIT EV costed me only $530, i.e. is a saving of  36.3% 

So, if anyone asks me about my decision to go EV again, I can happily say 'so far so good' &#x263A